{"id":3907,"date":"2018-10-02T16:37:21","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T22:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/?p=3907"},"modified":"2018-10-02T17:23:05","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T23:23:05","slug":"review-of-courtney-barnett-at-the-ogden-theater-on-9-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/2018\/10\/02\/review-of-courtney-barnett-at-the-ogden-theater-on-9-28\/","title":{"rendered":"Concert Review: Courtney Barnett at The Ogden Theater on 9\/28"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Taken by Eric de Redelijkheid on Flikr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This past Saturday, I was lucky enough to see the first night of Courtney Barnett\u2019s North American tour promoting her most recent album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, <\/em>released this May. My sister and I navigated our way through a crowd of IPA-drinking and Blundstone-wearing 30-something-year-old fans and eventually made our way to the front of Denver\u2019s Ogden Theater. I\u2019ve been lucky enough to see Courtney twice before \u2013 once with Kurt Vile promoting their joint album Lotta Sea Lice <\/em>at Nashville\u2019s historic Ryman Auditorium, and another time at Shaky Knees Festival in Atlanta \u2013 but this was the most intimate venue I\u2019d seen her play.<\/p>\n

From the moment she stepped on the stage, no one could take their eyes off of her. I don\u2019t play guitar myself, so I\u2019m not typically apt at telling a guitar virtuoso apart from a player who\u2019s just okay, but after watching Courtney\u2019s intricate fretting all over the guitar neck, I realized what exceptional talent she had. She\u2019s been praised countless times for her lyricism, but her abilities on the guitar are seriously underrated.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re already familiar with Courtney Barnett, you\u2019d know that she\u2019s been lauded for her witty attention to detail and ability to create memorable songs out of mundane events ever since she started making music in 2014. For instance, some of her best-known songs are about an asthma attack, house hunting, and eating ramen noodles. However, some of her songs are a much more personal and vulnerable account of life through her eyes. The audience lost it when she sung one of her most well-known songs, \u201cPedestrian at Best,\u201d and everyone yelled with her as she screamed \u201cPut me on a pedestal and I\u2019ll only disappoint you! \/ Tell me I\u2019m exceptional, I promise to exploit you!\u201d Her self-deprecating remark is an ironic statement about not wanting to be fame that inevitably comes along with being a musical phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Similarly, one of the songs on her new album is titled \u201cCrippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence\u201d and here she is also especially critical about herself (\u201cI never feel as stupid as when I\u2019m around you \/ And indecision rots \/ Like a bag of last week\u2019s meat\u201d). However, she still comes across as uninhibited \u2013 never caring how her audience will receive her perceived self-consciousness. Even though that songs ends with her claiming \u201cI don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know anything,\u201d and repeats it literally twelve times, it\u2019s obvious that one thing she does<\/em> know is herself.<\/p>\n

At one point during the show, she introduced one of her older songs \u201cAre You Looking After Yourself?\u201d by telling us she wrote it after a long phone call with her parents. The song begins with a line that was spoken by her parents: \u201cAre you working \/ hard my darling? \/ We\u2019re so worried,\u201d but she counters their criticism with: \u201cI don\u2019t want to no 9 to 5 \/ Telling me that I\u2019m alive.\u201d Later in the song, her parents suggest \u201cYou should start some \/ sort of trust fund \/ just in case you fail.\u201d I imagine that being a musician, especially one who writes so personally like Courtney does, can be terrifying since she has to constantly rely on others\u2019 validation and positive reception in order to keep going. However, Courtney replies with a sarcastic response and sings \u201cI don\u2019t know what I was thinking \/ I should get a job\u2026 \/ should get married \/ have some babies \/ watch the evening news.\u201d The thought that Courtney, a woman of such obvious talent, would quit making art and instead get a job is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Her humble attitude helps explain why 1,600 of us in the sold-out Ogden Theater were so entranced by Courtney for her entire two-hour long set; she\u2019s so devoted to her work and in love with what she is doing that we couldn\u2019t help but marvel at all of the energy she put in to every note and every word. Thanks, Courtney, for blowing us all away once again, and I hope this won\u2019t be the last time I see you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Saturday, I was lucky enough to see the first night of Courtney Barnett\u2019s North American tour promoting her most recent album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, released this May. My sister and I navigated our way through a crowd of IPA-drinking and Blundstone-wearing 30-something-year-old fans and eventually made our way to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[151,149,150],"class_list":["post-3907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","category-shows","tag-concert","tag-courtneybarnett","tag-ogdentheater"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa7fJU-111","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3907"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3916,"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3907\/revisions\/3916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/socc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}